Portugal confirms Europe's swing to the Right

Parabéns, Portugal. Congratulations, Portugal. Where the people of Greece appear to be in denial, rioting whenever spending cuts are suggested, our oldest allies accept that they cannot carry on with the policies that led them to the current disaster, and have elected a government committed to deficit reduction.

The result was a particular triumph for Paulo Portas, who has led the free-market CDS-PP to its highest share of the vote in twenty years, and who now seems certain to form a coalition with the Centre-Right Social Democrats. (All Portuguese parties have Leftist titles, reflecting the circumstances of their foundation after the 1974 revolution. Their names, as someone remarked of a similar phenomenon in the French Third Republic, are like the light reaching Earth from stars long extinct.) Portas, a cerebral former editor, had been almost alone in arguing that spending levels were unsustainable; when the crisis hit, he was vindicated.

Portugal is part of a wider European flight from the Left. Of the 27 EU member states, only five now have Left-of-Centre governments: Austria, Cyprus, Greece, Slovenia and Spain. Spain seems certain to swing Right at the next election – its governing Socialist party was trounced in local polls last month – which would leave Right-led governments in 23 states containing 96 per cent of the EU's population.

Why? Mainly because people see that the money has run out. During the boom years, voters were happy enough to indulge big-spending parties. Now, they simply want competence.

Whether they will get it is a different matter. The single currency, and the associated plans for fiscal integration, seriously limit the ability of free-market parties to pursue growth strategies. The awful truth is that, as long as your country is in the euro, it doesn't much matter how you vote.